Robotics

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Robots are already in widespread use in manufacturing and warfare. You see them increasingly in hospitals, warehouses, even homes. The mainstreaming of robotics presents a number of interesting puzzles for administrative, tort, and other areas of the law.

CIS has emerged as a national leader in exploring the intersection of law and robotics. Our staff has published on a variety of topics, including autonomous driving, the domestic use of drones, robotics and privacy, and liability for personal robots. We have held several events around artificial intelligence and robotics, including the annual Robot Block Party for National Robotics Week that draws thousands of visitors.

Dr. Asaro is Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies at the New School in New York City. He is the co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, and has written on lethal robotics from the perspective of just war theory and human rights. Dr. Asaro's research also examines agency and autonomy, liability and punishment, and privacy and surveillance as it applies to consumer robots, industrial automation, smart buildings, aerial drones and autonomous vehicles.

Ryan Calo is an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a former research director at CIS. A nationally recognized expert in law and emerging technology, Ryan's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired Magazine, and other news outlets. Ryan serves on several advisory committees, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Future of Privacy Forum.

Patrick Lin is the director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group, based at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he is also an associate philosophy professor. He has published several books and papers in the field of technology ethics, especially with respect to nanotechnology, human enhancement, robotics, cyberwarfare, space exploration, and other areas. He teaches courses in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of law. Dr.

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If your pet dog Hans takes a selfie, does he own the copyright? A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (“Ninth Circuit”) is instructive. It says that a monkey can’t own the copyright to his selfie. The reason? Only humans can own a copyright under U.S. law. But who owns artificial intelligence (“AI”) created artwork? This entry addresses that issue.

Following Uber’s fatal crash in Arizona, Governor Doug Ducey is attracting attention for what he did and did not do. This is not surprising; as I noted in 2016, Arizona's governor decided to embrace Uber’s vision, for better or for worse. This discussion, however, tends to elide the important question of his actual legal authority.

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The use of robots inevitably changes the equation for how police apply "use of force," a term that is broadly defined by the International Association of Chiefs of Police as the "amount of effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject."

The robot used by the Dallas police department to kill Micah Johnson — the sniper who fired into a peaceful protest and killed five police officers, injuring others — was originally designed to defuse explosives. The police attached a pound of the explosive C4 to the robot, creating a makeshift weapon out of a design that was not intended to inflict harm on people. The robot was also remote-controlled, not autonomous.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.

Last week, the Dallas police killed a suspected gunman with a bomb-delivering robot. It was a desperate measure for desperate times: five law enforcement officers were killed and several more wounded before the shooter was finally cornered.

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"“It is clear that the Pentagon aims to build out Project Maven to armed drones, and its functionality does not need much adjustment to become a target recognition system, carried out by an armed drone, that could function without meaningful human control,” said Peter Asaro, an Associate Professor at the School of Media Studies at The New School and a co-author of the letter."

"In this week’s episode of Yahoo News’ Unfiltered, we talk to New School professor Peter Asaro about the dangers of artificial intelligence technology and autonomous weapons. In an age when AI plays a dominant role in pop culture, some may view Slaughterbots as science fiction, but for Asaro, it’s the not-so-distant future.

"“I think law gets blamed too often,” says Bryant Walker Smith, a legal scholar with the University of South Carolina School of Law who studies self-driving vehicles.

“I don’t think the crashes have changed the approaches of the developers or the regulators,” Walker Smith says, but it’s easy to imagine that increased scrutiny encouraged Audi to keep its new system out of the US—at least for now."

"More than 90 academics in artificial intelligence, ethics, and computer science released an open letter today that calls on Google to end its work on Project Maven and to support an international treaty prohibiting autonomous weapons systems.

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Probe the difficult questions that we will need to address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades. Explore the nuances of our future and prepare for the complex problems that will rise as our lives become more A.I. dependent.

Adults 18+ Only.

This program is free thanks to the generosity of the Lowell Institute.

In 2013, Elon Musk proposed an "open source transportation concept" of levitating vehicles zooming passengers through vacuum tubes at 760 miles an hour. It would be weatherproof, energy-efficient, relatively inexpensive, have autonomous controls. Its impact on urban and inter-city transport could reshape economies and families.

U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a hearing on Wednesday, November 16, 2016, at 3:00 p.m. entitled “Exploring Augmented Reality.” The hearing will examine the emergence, benefits, and implications of augmented reality technologies. Unlike virtual reality that creates a wholly simulated reality, augmented reality attempts to superimpose images and visual data on the physical world in an intuitive way.

Attendees will hear leading speakers, participate in interactive breakout sessions, and network with key innovators in this exciting field. Don't miss what's in store for the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2016.

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In 2013, Elon Musk proposed an "open source transportation concept" of levitating vehicles zooming passengers through vacuum tubes at 760 miles an hour. It would be weatherproof, energy-efficient, relatively inexpensive, have autonomous controls. Its impact on urban and inter-city transport could reshape economies and families.

FLI’s Ariel Conn recently spoke with Heather Roff and Peter Asaro about autonomous weapons. Roff, a research scientist at The Global Security Initiative at Arizona State University and a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, recently compiled an international database of weapons systems that exhibit some level of autonomous capabilities. Asaro is a philosopher of science, technology, and media at The New School in New York City.

Peter Asaro (assistant professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School) and S. Matthew Liao (director of the Center for Bioethics at New York University) talk to Live Science's Denise Chow and Space.com's Tariq Malik about the ethics of AI.